


Me From Fire, Him From Clay

by penguinparity



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Horror, Demons, Dreams, Gen, Horror, Insanity, Nightmares, Possession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-23
Updated: 2010-03-23
Packaged: 2017-10-08 06:14:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/73565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penguinparity/pseuds/penguinparity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Morning Star rose each night in Sam's dreams like a brilliant and bitter presence, burning in his mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Me From Fire, Him From Clay

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt over at the [Multifandom Horror Comment Meme](http://community.livejournal.com/sharp_teeth/). Specific prompt and notes at the end. Spoilers for up to 5.04 The End. A bit longer than the original comment fic posted in the Meme, now with bonus Castiel!

Dean hadn't been lying when he told his past self that Sam had said yes in Detroit. That dick of an Angel had been right. You couldn't change the world by refusing Michael.

-

Lucifer’s seduction was subtle. He didn’t promise Sam eternal salvation. He didn’t promise redemption. He didn’t promise revenge. Lucifer made no pretense that Sam would be whole in mind or body when he was done. The Morning Star rose each night in Sam’s dreams like a brilliant and bitter presence, burning in his mind.

Each morning when Sam woke, he felt as if he was drowning in the bitter taste of wormwood. Being slowly poisoned in his dreams as surely as if he’d been fed the toxic herb itself.

For the first few months, Sam’s dreams were a repetition on the same theme: his endless day inside the Trickster’s loop in Boward County. Dean died so many times, in so many ways, in Sam’s dreams that Sam started to feel like his waking hours spent next his living brother were the figment of his imagination. Each time as Dean lay dying; he’d look at Sam with a slightly accusing stare as if to ask why Sam had let this happen. Lucifer was always there, just at the periphery, watching. Sometimes he was another patron in the diner when Dean choked on his food; sometimes he was a passerby on the street when Dean was crushed under that damned piano.

Sam started drinking more about 3 months after the dreams started, trying to drown out his dreams each night. It didn’t help, but the dreams started to change after that. One night, after ‘Heat of the Moment’ started up in Sam’s mind for possibly the hundredth time, Dean turned to Sam with an accusing glare.

“Why are you letting this happen to me, Sammy?” Dean asked. “Stop letting me die.”

Sam woke from the dream with his heart racing, barely able to look over to his brother sleeping in the other bed. Sam refused to sleep the next night; he sat and stared at Dean as he slept.

“The longer you stall, the more painful it will be for him,” Lucifer said from his position in the opposite chair. Sam jumped, blinking back into awareness or possibly another dream. When he reached for his shotgun, the Devil had vanished and Sam found himself alone at the table again. That morning Dean had shot him repeated looks when he woke to find Sam sitting at the hotel’s table, coffee in hand. Sam neglected to mention his vision of Lucifer in the hotel room.

The following night, the Mystery Spot was blessedly absent from Sam’s dreams. He was so thankful he fell to the ground in the grassy field. It wasn’t until he saw the dirty shovel next to him that Sam realized just where he was. The grass around him blew backwards, as if from the force of his realization, to reveal the small rectangular plot Sam had dug only 4 months before. The buzzing in Sam’s ears was almost deafening as he stared down at the reddish clay below him.

Sam heard a thump below him and he started in surprise. He heard the muffled sound of yelling deep below him underground. _Oh God, Dean’s alive, he’s alive_, became almost a chant flowing out of Sam’s mouth as he scrambled to dig his brother out. He kept digging but no matter how far or desperately he dug, he couldn’t reach his brother. Some nights, Sam heard the screams of his brother trying to escape from his coffin. The sound burning Sam with the knowledge that he’d made the coffin too strong and buried it too deep. Other nights the screams trailed off as Sam could only imagine in horror as Dean suffocated to death. Dean always seemed to know that Sam was out there, calling for him desperately, begging for help. No matter how loud the buzzing in the field got, Sam was always able to hear Dean’s screams.

Sam had thought being unable to get to his brother in time had been the worst of it, but he’d been wrong. Lucifer had only been warming up. The nights when Sam managed to get Dean free were the worst. One particular night, the ground shifted suddenly and a grimy set of fingers wiggled up through the surface. By the time he’d unearthed nearly a full arm, Sam knew something had gone horribly wrong, but he just knew if only he could dig his brother out faster somehow it might be OK. Dean had freed his torso from the ground just as the dirt around him started to collapse back into the grave. Sam lunged for Dean’s arm and missed. He could only stare helplessly as Dean fell backwards into the grave. The ground kept collapsing in on itself, further down and Dean continued to fall. Sam hung over the edge of the grave unable to stop his brother’s fall back into hell.

One night he tried to walk away from the grave he dug for his brother. Sam had already watched Dean fall into hell so many times he lost count. Lucifer walked next to Sam as he turned away and from the Morning Star’s slack, open mouth Dean’s screams came pouring out as he started to suffocate. His screaming carried clear across the field above the buzzing to Sam as he came running back, digging desperately into the dirt, trying to save his brother. When Sam reached Dean, he grabbed his brother’s arm and tried to hold tight before his brother fell down into the flames of the Pit again.

As Sam lay next to the gaping pit to hell, the field had suddenly filled with a great and terrible light. The buzzing reached a deafening level that had Sam curling into a ball trying to cover his ears as his screams were swallowed in the almighty noise. When Sam woke, it had been to darkness and muted sounds he could barely make out.

“…in his dreams…tried to stop him”

“So stop…mojo…biggest dick around…”

“…my true form…nearly…”

Sam thought the voices sounded like his brother and Castiel, but his eyes and ears took days to fully recover from the dream so he’d never been sure. Despite feeling like he’d spent an hour staring at the sun while he was awake, Sam’s dreams remained as vivid and lucid as ever.

The next night Sam dreamt he finally managed to save his brother before the grave collapsed. Lucifer was once again standing nearby, watching silently. Sam pulled Dean up from the ground and they lay panting in the grass under the harsh unforgiving light of the dream sun. The field was mercifully silent except for the faint sound of insects in the far distance; that quality of silence when all life flees in acknowledgment of a dangerous predator.

“You can’t save me, Sammy,” Dean finally said when he sat up and started dusting himself off. Sam looked up and saw the truth of it in Dean’s pitch black eyes.

Even after saving the demon version of Dean dozens of times, after watching his brother fall back into hell repeatedly, Sam hadn’t thought the dream could get worse. Lucifer had stood nearby, silently watching as Dean had finally torn Sam apart with his new demon strength. Sam woke from those dreams choking on his own blood. Only to open his eyes to the concerned face of Castiel, who had taken to watching him while he slept, forgoing his search for God while the Winchester brothers slept.

A few times, Sam had been overcome by his thirst for demon blood and sliced his brother open. When Sam sat back in horror the first time, covered in Dean’s blood and filled with shame, he thought that would be the end of the dream. Instead he looked up to see Lucifer crouched above him, pristine in a white suit.

“You can end this, Sam,” he said softly. “Say yes.”

“You’ll spare Dean?” Sam asked in a broken voice as he wiped the blood off his face.

“We both know that’s impossible.”

The worst dream was the one that followed. It started with vague recollections of a dark haired woman screaming. Sam could only wander through a locked house, following the sound of broken screaming. The house seemed endless; no matter how many doors he opened and hallways he ran through he never got closer. The screaming filled him with desperation, for what he knew not. Some nights he ran through the house frantically trying to find the woman as her sobs echoed down the halls. Other nights he ran away, filled with terror at what he might find.

Sam didn’t know how many nights it took before he started waking up screaming too. By that point reality and dreaming had started to blur together, Sam sometimes dreamed in the middle of the day. After a month or so, his dream was eerily silent and Sam spent the night running through the endless house in a dead panic trying to find the woman. The next night, Sam woke into his dream to find himself in bed next to a sleeping Sarah Blake. The soft crying from the corner of the room drew his attention away.

Lucifer stood next to the crib in the corner, looking down inside and smiling. It was a genuine smile that sent a chill straight through Sam’s spine.

“Say hello to your son, Sam,” the Morning Star said. Sam woke up in a cold panic. Sam saw the boy in his mind, getting older. Blonde, innocent, pure. In 2014 he would be 9. Lilith had loved riding in little girls and she had said it herself, she’d been the apple of Satan’s eye. Who’s to say she hadn’t Daddy’s little girl in every sense of the word. When Dean, Castiel and Sam clear out a nest of demons from an orphanage the following week, Sam saw the boy in the faces of half the children. Sam knew, somewhere deep in his mind it wasn’t possible. He’d never slept with Sarah during their time in New Paltz all those years ago. But his mind has been losing its ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. Sam dreamed every night but he never got any rest.

“He has your eyes,” Lucifer observed the next day while Sam was out hunting down a pack of hellhounds with Dean north of Toledo, Ohio. Sam started; he had sworn he was awake. After Dean burned the bodies of the dogs, they were forced to go north into Michigan because there were reports of a Croatoan infected mob south of them on I-75.

In his dreams that night, Gabriel was there, talking about bloodlines and vessels. Lucifer smiled from his chair nearby. Tonight he was overseeing the fitting of Sam’s son for a new dazzling white suit.

“You’ll be here soon, Sam. Just in time for his birthday party. They’re telling me it’s going to be a real blow out,” Lucifer said and turned to the child.

“You’ll say yes to your present, won’t you son?” Lucifer asked just as Sam woke up.

When they end up in Detroit, Sam refused to sleep. He managed it for 2 days, drinking obscene amounts of coffee and pacing constantly. Every time Dean or Castiel even suggested sleep, Sam went off onto a jumbling rant about Lucifer, his illegitimate child and how the angel was going to finally get him if he fell asleep. Sam didn’t even notice the sleeping pills Dean slipped into his soda on the third day.

When Sam woke into the dream he didn’t find Lucifer waiting with his son. He found his father and mother waiting for him. They smiled, their black eyes crinkling.

“Hurry up, son,” John said. “We wouldn’t want to keep Lucifer waiting.” They pulled Sam through a doorway and into a packed Church. The pews were all filled with Sam’s dead friends and family. Ellen was sitting in the front row next to Hendrickson. His mom and dad took their place on opposite pew. Jo stood at the front in a bridesmaid’s dress.

Sam blinked and found himself standing in front of the altar, next to Jess. Sam’s child, looking maybe 9 or 10 years old now, stood next to them in a white suit. Sam knew, in that way one knows in dreams, that the child was no longer human.

“Are you ready to say yes, Sam?” Lucifer asked, speaking through the child’s mouth.

There in that church, asleep in Detroit, Sam finally said yes. Not to Lucifer, but to the madness brewing in his mind. When he woke the next morning, he slipped away from his brother and angelic keeper. He sent his brother a text weeks later, even though Sam thought it had only been a few days, saying he’d gone to find his son before Lucifer did.

They’d found him again, nearly a year later, but by that point the social fabric of the US had collapsed. Mental health clinics and hospitals were empty, abandoned buildings long since looted. Anyone who couldn’t take care of themselves was a burden. One Dean had been more than willing to bear, but Sam had slipped away again soon enough.

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: AU for the future!verse in 5.04 The End in which Sam never said yes to Lucifer - _You filled my dreams with madness_.  
> The title is from a Qur'an verse 7:11–12 when the devil (Iblis) protests God’s demand that he bow down to Adam: "I am better than he: Thou didst create me from fire, and him from clay."  
> The references to Lucifer/Morning Star being bitter are drawn from Revelations 8:10, which talks about the fall of an Archangel poisoning the oceans with wormwood.


End file.
